Jeanne McElvaney Quotes

#1. With the help of your therapist or healing ally, you can identify who makes you feel uneasy, concerned, scared, or defensive.

Jeanne McElvaney

#2. These memories are lost to our conscious and cannot be remembered like an ordinary memory. Sometimes they come to us as flashbacks.

Jeanne McElvaney

#3. About half of us dissociated our abuse at the moment it happened. We lived our days not knowing it happened ... or could happen again. But every survivor has shadows of their experience following them.

Jeanne McElvaney

#4. The moment you believe your experience is caused by other people, you are giving them your power.

Jeanne McElvaney

#5. We learned to turn inward to a place where we were able to re-define what was happening to us. In this mental space, we were able to color our experience with childhood reasoning or bury it deeply

Jeanne McElvaney

#6. Each survivor chooses how secrecy is going to fit into their healing. Some share with their immediate family, but not their childhood family and friends.

Jeanne McElvaney

#7. I think most survivors transfer the shame of their experience into their present-day healing and become ashamed of themselves for needing the time and support

Jeanne McElvaney

#8. I believe forgiving supports us most profoundly when it comes toward the end of our journey, when we intimately know what we are forgiving ~

Jeanne McElvaney

#9. Dissociated trauma memories are not attached to other memories by association. These memories go directly to the unconscious as a biological response separates awareness from consciousness. It's a natural, protective occurrence and it happens without will.

Jeanne McElvaney

#10. I was survivor of childhood sexual abuse in therapy for dissociated trauma memories.

Jeanne McElvaney

#11. You invite a time in the near future when you are no longer building your life on the unknown influences of your childhood sexual abuse.

Jeanne McElvaney

#12. : Our life may seem consistently out of control or overwhelming because, in avoiding the truths of our childhood, we didn't develop the skills to effectively pilot our lives.

Jeanne McElvaney

#13. Our experience taught us we were alone so we have to break through barriers of shame, fear, and habit to realize the time has come to find help.

Jeanne McElvaney